Le Cordon Bleu

April 24, 2006

I've been avoiding expressing my immediate dream because I didn't want to jinx it. Now I see that the idea is preposterous, so I might as well share my little foodie fantasy and if it doesn't happen then I can grovel for sympathy or if it does happen we can all celebrate together.

I'm graduating in four weeks from Le Cordon Bleu and I'm trying desperately get myself ready for my "stage". A stage is like an apprenticeship without pay in a restaurant. We call it an internship in America. However, in the french kitchen it really means slave labor. I have worked in kitchens in San Francisco restaurants and run overly packed cooking classes with hormonally challenged teenagers – a feat I still look back on with wonder – but the idea of working in a Michelin star restaurant is intimidating.

In the vein of Julia Child, I've started working in the kitchens at Le Cordon Bleu to try and get back into the swing of prep work and to practice with unfamiliar produce, meats, and fish. It hasn't been easy. First of all, my french is horrible. The sous-sol chef barks orders to the assistants and I have to double check to see what he's said. This is a huge problem. Often instead of telling me what to do, he'll come over and show me an example. What am I going to do in a french restaurant where nobody speaks English? Is the head chef going to come over to me and show me an example every time he want's something done? Uh, don't think so!

I secretly think the sous sol chef puts up with me only because my french makes him laugh. I'm not shy about talking en francais, but my pronunciation, grammar, and verb conjugation in elementary. On our first encounter I told him that I needed a "gros carrot" for one of the chefs. He burst out laughing so hard that tears started flowing from his eyes. I didn't understand what I had said, until I grabbed a big carrot from the walk in fridge – then it hit me. I had asked him if I could have a big penis.

To make matters worse, there's a little hierarchy amongst the student kitchen staff at LCB and I spent the first week having to really prove myself. I'm older than everyone down there and have restaurant experience so you can imagine my surprise (and annoyance!). I know that sounds cocky, but when a 21 year old tells you your brunoise is shit and orders you to do it again in a tone reserved for disobedient kids, it takes a lot of deep breathing to maintain composure. And, by the way, the recipe said dice not brunoise. However, I sucked it up and inwardly thought, "This is just a test, it could be much worse in a real French restaurant kitchen".

My favorite was when one of the students tried to tell me how to wash lettuce. I was ripping the core out quicker than he was cutting it out and he was insisting that I was doing it wrong. I finally turned to him and said, "I used to prep for hundreds of salads a night, I think I can handle these twenty heads here". After that he realized that I had some experience and instead started asking me questions about quick ways to handle different produce.

But, I don't want to come across as a know-it-all here because many of these Cordon Bleu Kitchen Slaves have been working sous-sol a long time and they understand the flow of preparing lunch for the whole Cordon Bleu staff as well as preparing all the foods for the demonstrations and practicals. I have learned a huge amount from the students in the basement of Cordon Bleu: I can shuck oysters, clean monkfish (very hard), cut purrrfect brunoise and julienne, butcher just about any type of meat, and understand basic french orders. And yes, I've also learned that it's okay to be 30-ish and still learning.

I have four weeks in the basement kitchen at Le Cordon Bleu and then It's either sink or swim. Why am I doing this you might ask? Because I want more than anything in the world to do my stage at my favorite restaurant in Paris, the three Michelin star, Guy Savoy. This is my favorite restaurant in Paris and if I had 285 euros for dinner I would eat there every night.

Recently Guy Savoy was voted the 7th best restaurant in the world. I would be happy peeling potatoes in a corner if they let me.

So keep your fingers crossed for me and if anyone has any fancy shmancy favorite restaurants here in Paris, please share...

April 19, 2006

We made a dish today at Le Cordon Bleu, that was super yummy. I loved the theme of the recipe because I got to create each part as if it were a present. The lamb was wrapped in brik pastry, like one of those packages with loads of tissue paper popping out. The vegetable Tian (layers of tomato, onion, eggplant, zucchini) I baked in a ring mold and placed strips of zucchini around the sides to form a wrapping paper with a bow of zucchini on top. The little breaded deep fried garlic cloves brought back memories of styrofoam popcorn – but they actually tasted really good.

The lamb is first seared rare and then left to cool in the fridge. Any cut of lamb will do– you can choose a fillet or have individual chops. Next we made an herb crust with pistachios, pine nuts, basil, egg white, and oil that we smeared over the meat. We wrapped the meat up in brik pastry and baked it for 10 minutes. This is one of those recipes that would be excellent for a dinner party. Everything can be done ahead and refrigerated and then baked right before serving. If you're not a lamb eater then why not fish? Salmon would be de-lish.

The vegetable Tian is nothing more than slices of zucchini, eggplant, onions, and red peppers sautéed quickly in olive oil and then layered together with sliced tomato. A little salt and pepper et viola! You can cook the Tian in a big dish or make individual ones.

I would love to give quantities here, but I'm afraid this is one of those Le Cordon Bleu special recipes. However, you can take the general idea and play around with it. It was a lot of fun to create. Let me know if you have any questions about brik pastry or anything else.

P.S. This book has most of the recipes that we cook at school in a menu format (entrée, main course, dessert). It's a great book. I've already bought two for both my mums! Wish I had bought them on Amazon, they're 20 euros cheaper, can you believe that!?!? I got all the chefs to autograph it too, so I suppose that makes up for the extra expense.

April 15, 2006

The cuisine students at Le Cordon Bleu had a field trip to Rungis, the largest professional fresh product market in the world. The market is so big that it's actually it's own city! In this supermarket, just outside of Paris, there's a bank, hairdresser, coffee shop, chinese restaurant, hospital, and bistro – what more could one ask for?

My day started at 4:30 A.M. After a restful three hours of sleep I jumped in my pre-ordered taxi and headed across town to meet up with friends and await our tour buses. We were told to get there by 5:15 A.M. sharp or the buses would leave without us. I arrived at 5:00 A.M. underdressed, with no jacket, scarf, or hat – WHAT WAS I THINKING? The buses were late. An hour late. I froze my butt off during that long, long hour and had to pimp clothing from other barely awake friends (thanks Omry & Richard). We all huddled for warmth and amused ourselves with silly jokes still punch drunk from lack of sleep. Finally our buses arrived and we were off! Unfortunately, by 6 A.M we had missed all of the fish market, and most of the butchering in the meat packing area too.

I guess I didn't really understand how big Rungis was going to be. I thought it was going to be like a large farmer's market. When the bus tour guide rattled off the figure of 3,000 hectares, it really didn't mean anything to me – uh, what's a hectare?. Rungis is huge! We started off in the produce area and worked our way through exotic fruits, miniature vegetables, edible flowers, artichokes bigger than my head, hundreds of apple varieties, potatoes for miles, and more. I've never seen so much food in my life. In fact, Rungis supplies 20 million consumers with food. Incroyable!!!

After our vegetable and fruit tour we drove to the meat packing area and donned special hair nets and jackets. The area was a bit of a shock initially. There were hundreds of animals hung on meat hooks: veal, pigs, cows, horses, suckling pigs, etc. I'm a little desensitized because we butcher smaller portions of meat all the time in class, but I was struck dumb by the sight of dead baby suckling pigs. I don't know why, but baby animals really tear at my heartstrings. The funny thing was, they all seemed to be smiling. I wanted to ask how exactly they are killed, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Another bizarre sight were butchered cows hanging with their pictures pinned on. As if to say, "Here's Daisy, she was once a gal chewing cud, now just a side of beef – but not just any side of beef – a blue ribbon choice". And then there was the horse section. I love horses and love to ride and I don't think of horse as an acceptable form of food. If I ever have to eat horse steak I'll probably throw up, but I was impressed by their massive muscular structure covered with the deep yellow fat. One of the meat packing guys told me that a lot of the horses come from America. That really shocked me. There were other disturbing things like how they crush the animal skulls to get the brains out, but I won't go into that...

Meat packers are a happy morbid bunch who can slash an animal into parts in record breaking time. I was interested in the process and impressed by the cleanliness of the facilities, but happy to get out – besides, it was freezing in there! Interesting to note also, is the bidding process on the animals. Restaurant and market managers come down to Rungis and haggle over the prices. I guess that's where the 'before' pictures come in handy. How some one can look at a side of beef and know what it's worth is beyond me.

Lips blue, fingers numb, and brains churning over the morality of animal death, we left for the the fromage section. Oh happy day! Many students entered the cheese warehouse and immediately pinched their noses from the overwhelming powerful cheese scents. Not me! I took a big sniff and smiled. I love cheese and there was every single type to be seen (unfortunately none to taste – and we were starving). Soft cheese wrapped in leaves or herbs, huge wheels of cheese aging on wooden racks, gooey cheeses with moldy crusts ranging from dark grey in color to soft fluffy white. Cheese for miles...yummmm.

I didn't know that buyers could sample the big wheels of cheese before buying. The process is kinda cool, like wine tasting. There is a special tool that takes a plug out of the cheese wheel about the size of a cork. The hole is then plugged back up with just the outer rind from the little cork. Next time I need to buy a wheel I'll make sure to get a plug full first...hey, maybe that's where all the holes in cheese come from!

Lastly we finished with the flower market which was half empty and dull in comparison to the San Francisco flower mart. There was only a hand full of vendors, but it's not exactly the best time to grow right now in Europe. The buyers for the market are on the phones every day to foreign countries including South America (Ecuador for roses) asking what the weather is like and how the flowers are doing. It's really a fast paced business and the buyers must speak a lot of languages. I always thought that the flower industry was more laid back, but it's more like the New York stock exchange.

On our way back to school everyone passed out on the bus. Heads bobbed trying unsuccessfully to stay awake as we pulled into the 15th arrondissement – more tired than when we had left. On arrival we stumbled back into school, changed into our uniforms, and prepared for a three hour demonstration on meat. I'm not quite sure how any of us made it through that demo, and I don't remember a lot about it either except that I did have to leave a few times to get coffee from the vending machine.

We always think so much about what we're going to put on the plate, but seldom do we have the time to actually consider the business of food. How it's grown, how it gets to the markets, the middle men involved in price negotiations, and the health standards maintained or ignored. The trip was fascinating, like walking backstage in a Broadway show.

Rungis is a professional market and you can't get in without the appropriate license so we were very lucky to have this opportunity. It was an experience I'll remember forever despite my lack of sleep and warm clothing!

April 07, 2006

I happen to cook next to a young woman, Jamie, in my superior cuisine class at Le Cordon Bleu who never ceases to amaze me with her big heart, powerhouse energy, and incredible eye for design. She made me this pastry Big Mac the other day to cheer me up (and it wasn't easy to make). For those unfamiliar with the French pastry delicacy 'macaroon' they are cookies lighter than air, slightly crunchy on the outside and just a little sticky towards the middle. They are the most ethereal cookies, dissolving in the mouth instantaneously before one can even swallow.

When I first came to Paris I thought macaroons were those shredded coconut clumps that are dipped in chocolate with a cherry on the top. They're not. Macaroons come in all different flavors: caramel, lemon, raspberry, chocolate, vanilla, etc and are normally filled with a flavored butter-cream. Although the ingredients are simple they are difficult to make and the outcome is rarely predictable.

The one posted here is of course overly stuffed with filling to give the hamburger effect. Next time you're in Paris stop by LaDuree for tea and macaroons. For those San Franciscans out there, Miette at the Ferry Building has a beautiful little patisserie that makes them too and they just melt in your mouth. (they also offer apprenticeships so check their website out if you're interested)

Here's what we look like when we go to school. This is a good picture too. If my old students knew I was wearing a hat like this I'd never hear the end of it. Good thing I'm across the pond where no one can find me. Thanks Jamie for your sense of humor! We look like dorks in these hats but our food tastes good. Gros Bisous!

April 06, 2006

I should have known that today was going to be tough when I got to school and some one had taken my seat in the demo room. I know it sounds petty (and is petty), but I sit in the same place everyday, and have for 7 months. Everyone knows it's my chair. I came into the demo room, spotted my taken chair, and looked over at the rest of the class who all simultaneously shrugged as if to say "I know, it's terrible, whaddyagonnado?". Grumpily, I sighed in defeat and went and sat next to the Chair Stealer. She didn't even offer to give me my seat back either, ha-rumph!

After the Chair Stealer threw my chi off for the morning, I was brought back to the light by the amazing recipes our chef had in store for us. A lobster salad with strawberry vinagrette served over ripe melon and garnished with lollo rossa lettuce (my fav!), next came more lobster over risotto garnished with an incredible sauce and puréed fennel with vanilla bean, lastly he prepared a dessert of fruit salad covered with pistachio sabayon and puff pastry decorated with italian meringue. Oh la la, incroyable!!!

At the end of every demo we get little plates of all the dishes so that we can taste what we are supposed to cook in our practicals. Normally we sit in our seats and the chef's assistant passes back racks of tasting plates for us to sample. But today because it was lobster, everyone crowded the front of the demo room pushing each other to get second helpings and grabbing huge lobster fillets off the chef's display plates and gobbling them up without sharing or anything. I don't like it when people get pushy. Maybe it's the school teacher in me, but I like it when people follow the rules, especially when it comes to lobster.

I left the demonstration annoyed. Then I went to get coffee with my group members and got even more annoyed because no one wanted to sit outside on one of the first sunny days we've had in months. Then I got more annoyed because my cell phone went kaput so I couldn't even call my husband and express my unhappiness (probably for the better anyway). When it was finally time to go to my practical I got even more annoyed, because we had a rent-a-chef (visiting chef) as our supervisor and they never know how we're supposed to cook the recipe or how our real chef did it in the demo, but they like to yell at us for doing everything wrong. Double ha-rumph!

This time I handled the lobster more bravely than in the past (Lobster Attack Part II). I picked a fat one and plopped it in my pot of boiling water with the lid on firm – just in case it tried to escape like last time. After two minutes I took it out and twisted the thorax from the head, pulled off the hood shell, and proceeded to move onto the meat in the pinchers. But the rent-a-chef came over and told me I was doing it wrong.
To smash the claw I used the palm of my hand and came down hard on it. It broke neatly and I pulled the claw meat out in one piece retaining the shape of the pincher. This was the way our real chef showed us. But no, Rent-A-Chef wanted me to use the back of my knife to crack the shell. As he was hovering over me, I used his method and it broke the claw meat. I looked up at him and he just shrugged and walked away. Triple ha-rumph!

Aside from my unusually fussy disposition, I managed to glide through the recipe super fast. Just as I was plating my gorgeous lobster, the chef decided that I needed a circle mold for my risotto. I tried to explain that our real chef hadn't used one. He told me to wait so he could get one. There is nothing more annoying than having all your food hot and perfectly cooked and then having to wait. nothing more annoying. I had just reheated the lobster in olive oil to the perfect done-ness and he wanted me to wait! TO WAIT!?!?! HA! You can't go back and re-heat lobster for a third time. That's worse than double dipping!

So, I waited. He eventually came back with one mold (for our whole group) and I made a stupid little circle with my risotto and placed my cold lobster on top with my cold sauce, cold vanilla fennel purée, and cold risotto stuffed squash blossom
.

Lucky for him, (because I was about ready to unleash demons from hell) he gave me good grades and admired my beautiful presentation. I told him, "but everything is cold!" and he said he didn't care that the sauce and fennel purée were delicious, but my risotto needed more seasoning. The lobster was cooked perfect. Happy with my grades and still incredibly angst, I packed up my knives quickly and left.

I took a taxi home with my lobster leftovers packed up for my husband to enjoy, wrote this post, and now I'm going to pour a glass of wine in the setting sun and hope that tomorrow my chair will be free.....

Tasty Easy Recipes:
Strawberry Vinegrette: Let a half basket of strawberries macerate in one part red wine vinegar then blend up and add three parts oil, strain out strawberry seed with a fine sieve. Season with salt and pepper. Totally delicious and easy!

Vanilla Bean Fennel Purée: Trim one fennel and take out hard middle section. Slice and throw into a pot. Cover with half milk, half water and add a vanilla bean pod and two star anise if available. When fennel is soft, purée in blender with a touch of cream. Split vanilla bean and scrape seeds, then add back to purée. Cover with film and keep warm until serving.

Lobster: stick it into a big pot of boiling water for two minutes to kill it. Then take out and de-shell (reserve shells for sauce if making). Heat up lobster meat right before serving in hot olive oil or serve cold (like me).

April 02, 2006

Today was one of those rare days where waking up at 7:00 A.M. on a Saturday (with a caipirinha headache – thanks Michael & Enrique!) and trekking across town to Le Cordon Bleu for a full day of demonstrations and practicals, was totally worthwhile. This little red fish recipe with rouget and crispy potato scales, was so pretty and delicious that all my morning moans and groans drifted into delighted oooh's and aaah's. Not to mention the truffled egg starter with basil potatoes or the tropical fruit dessert with freshly baked gingerbread and homemade coconut milk sorbet. Yummmm-y!

Our superior cuisine chef knew that none of us were going to be too thrilled about an early morning Saturday class. He cleverly started off with homemade gingerbread for the dessert and baked extra to pass around for us to nibble on during the three hour demo. Just the scent of baking cinnamon, allspice, ginger, and nutmeg transformed our grumpy sleep deprived class into a happily spice intoxicated bunch. Aromatherapy works.

The fish recipe, Filets de Rouget en Écailles de Pommes de Terres Croustillantes et Flan de Brocolis or Red Mullet Fillets with Crispy Potato Scales and Broccoli Flan, is simplistically beautiful and delicious. I absolutely adore rouget or red mullet for it's striking red flecked skin and delicate fillets. The crispy potato scales that cover it give texture and compliment the rouget's slight fishy taste. The sauce, an orange juice reduction with butter and white wine, added an irresistible summertime seaside feel. Hard not to envision eating this dish somewhere on the Cote d'Azur at a trendy open air cafe or bistro.

I find that broccoli can be difficult to get creative with. Overcooked it looses it's bright green magpie appeal and becomes a two year-old's nightmare. This flan, made with eggs and cream, brought out the best qualities in the cruciferous tree. The cream & eggs helps to sweeten the vegetable while the fat of both ingredients also heightens the silky smooth consistency. A little salt, pepper, and numetg et voila! Perfection!

As simple as this recipe looks, it is not easy to cook. My potato scales slid off my fish while frying as did many other's in my group and no one could figure out why. The pics above are done by a professional – our superior cuisine chef – who makes everything look easy. I wish I could lay claim to them, but not in this case. The sauce if done incorrectly separates (mine was delicious – halleluja for that!) and the flan if not baked right will get stuck in it's mold or worse, have browned edges. Again, my flan was super yummy...but my little red poisson, my beautiful fish lost it's crispy scales!!! Better luck next time...

March 31, 2006

As I was packing up my knives at school today, one of my cooking buddies, Cynthia, caught me and said, "Hey Amy, what are you going to name this one on your blog?" I had to pause, because the recipe today added new and challenging ingredients to my repertoire. After posing the question to the rest of my cooking group Richard piped up, "I know, you should call it Quail in a Casket!" – hence the title. Another member, Graham, chimed in "It's like, what do you wanna have for dinner tonight, spaghetti or....ris de veau?" We all fell over laughing, because the thought of actually going to the supermarket in search of sweetbreads seemed so far fetched.
Yes, I realize that we Superior Cuisine Le Cordon Bleu students sound horribly uneducated and perhaps even glib, but really, when you handle quail and all their tiny body parts (hearts, livers, bones, breasts, etc) and sweet breads that look like and feel like blubber, the thought of just a nice normal vegetarian bowl of pasta with some simple steamed vegetables seems like manna from heaven.
Friand de Cailles et Ris de Veau aux Shitakes (quail and veal sweet bread pastries with shitake mushrooms) is created with layers of seared quail breasts and escalopes of sweetbread with forcemeat made from ground up livers, hearts, and shitake mushrooms. It is then wrapped in puff pastry and baked. Do the flavors blend perfectly together? Yes. Could any of us in our class eat it? No People love sweetbreads – my dad ate them all the time – and many in our class might order it at a restaurant (including myself), but I guess our appetites disappeared after putting our little quail caskets together.
There is a misconception that sweetbreads are brains. Actually they are the thymus gland consisting of two parts, the elongated throat gland and the heart gland. (Isn't that the thing on your neck that swells up like a big lump when you're sick? Jeez, those glands are huge on cows!) If you think of cows and their big droopy necks, that's where you'll find this delicate wonder.

To prepare them it is necessary to soak in cold water to bring out any impurities and then blanch very quickly in boiling water (2 min) to remove the film that envelopes them. After that you can pan sear or bake and deglaze with a little madeira for extra flavor. They have a delicate sweet flavor and texture if cooked correctly. Quail is also easy to cook and I prefer just to roast it like a miniature chicken. You can part it into breasts and legs and pan fry it too. It is the California State bird so out respect I don't normally eat it, nor do I see it on Bay Area menus too often.

Just curious...does anyone have any lovely sweetbread recipes or experiences? Or does it make you go – blech!

March 29, 2006

Making sausage is really fun and we've made a lot of it at Le Cordon Bleu. It tastes much better than the commercial kind filled with chemicals, additives, and un-identifyable meat. It's not difficult to make if you have a meat grinder (or a butcher who will grind it for you), a plastic pastry bag, and a sausage pastry tip. The trickiest part is finding the natural casing (intestines cleaned) and pure pork fat or fatback (so it won't dry out). After you get the basic technique down you can get really crazy with maple sausage breakfast links or fiery Italian sausage, the possibilities are endless...

This article is for Matthew Rose who asked me how to make sausage, specifically Boudin Noir. I prefer Boudin Blanc for it's delicate flavor and lack of blood, however, the methods are the same. The problem with Boudin Noir is finding the blood. Sometimes we get pints of it in the kitchens at LCB for specific recipes like Poulet en Barbouille – pint of pig blood anyone? Blood when it's cooked binds ingredients together and turns a beautiful dark chocolate color, but it takes some getting used to. Here's the technique:

Grind all the meat and fat up together. Weigh meat and add salt and pepper to it (20g salt/ kilo meat, 4g pepper/ kilo meat). Then mix meat and all precooked & cooled ingredients together in a big bowl. Load up your pastry bag with meat filing and pastry tip and scrunch casing over the tip then tie off the end of the casing. Gently squeeze away. Make sure not to overfill so you can tie off links with cooking string. Once finished poke a few holes in casing with toothpick, especially if there's any air bubbles. Boil for 20 minutes then fry up! Voila!

After cross referencing many different Boudin Blanc recipes they all seem to be the same with the exception of whether or not to add breadcrumbs instead of potato starch. Here's the old tried and true standby sans breadcrumbs...

March 27, 2006

I've combined two of my favorite desserts from Le Cordon Bleu for maximum yumminess: almond cream tarts and raspberry crumble with chocolate sauce. In the past, I've had heated discussions with chefs over whether or not chocolate and strawberries truly compliment each other (they don't – and they're horrible in champagne too), however nobody disagrees that raspberries, almonds, and chocolate are a delicious trio.The crust is made of a simple sweet short pastry (for a video demo of making the crust see tart aux pommes recipe) and then layered with almond cream and raspberries served with infused chocolate sauce. It's a great recipe to make a day ahead because you can blind bake the tart shell with the almond cream, refrigerate, and then add the raspberries on top the next day and bake again right before serving for warm yumminess. I put measurements in metric because it's more accurate. Sur La Table sells a really cheap digital scale and it takes up less space than cups and spoons. (no this is not a sneaky ad – those are all clearly marked)

March 24, 2006

I thought we were off to a riveting start with french contemporary cuisine until everything came to a screeching halt aujourd'hui in my superior cuisine class at Le Cordon Bleu. As soon as the demonstration began I was transported back to the 70's for Petit Bar en Croûte Façon Coulibiac (Sea Bass in a Crust Coulibiac Style).

In truth, even our chef had the spirit of '76 twinkling in his bright green eyes, perhaps recalling the Bee Gee's world tour or maybe a rendez-vous avec un petit ami for a ABBA gig. Paranoid, I turned around from my front seat in the demo room half expecting the rest of the class to be decked in bell bottoms, feathered hair, and thick mustaches – just day dreaming – luckily.

Now, I'm a child of the early '70's and I can't pinpoint why exactly this recipe just screamed disco to me, but I'm telling you there was something about it. Perhaps it was the head and tail of the fish that were re-attached to the sea bass fillets. Or maybe it was the whole hard-boiled eggs added to the salmon/mushroom/rice stuffing. Or maybe I'm just recalling the fabulous buffet parties my mom used to throw including whole huge fish fillets cooked to perfection and people dancing to Stayin' Alive in living room. No seriously, I remember these things.

The seabass didn't taste bad in all honesty. It wasn't easy to make either, it took about two hours to conjure. Would I serve it at a three star restaurant? Mmmm, don't think so. But, If I was throwing a fancy disco soirée I might just bust out this type of novelty. Bon Appetit!